In this file photo, Vasyl Lomachenko (R) walks away after knocking down Jose Ramirez in the first round of their featherweight bout at the Thomas & Mack Center on October 12, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Lomachenko won by TKO in the fourth round. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Bob Arum isn’t the only promoter signing top-notch international talent, but the chairman of Top Rank Inc. does have two of the best to recently come out of the Olympic Games on his roster.

We’re referring to Vasyl Lomachenko of the Ukraine and Zou Shiming of China. Each is unusual in his own way.

Shiming will have his fourth pro bout next Saturday when he takes on Yokthong Kokietgym (15-2, 11 KOs) of Thailand in Macau, China (on HBO2). Shiming, who will turn 33 on March 18, did not turn pro until he was three weeks past his 32nd birthday, but his and Arum’s goal is for him to fight for a world title sometime this year.

Lomachenko will try to win a world championship in just his second pro fight on March 1 when he challenges Orlando Salido (40-12-2, 28 KOs) of Mexico for his featherweight title at the Alamodome in San Antonio (on HBO) on the undercard of the rematch between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Bryan Vera.

Call Arum crazy, but the longtime promoter believes Lomachenko can become the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Lomachenko, 25, won gold in the 2008 Olympic Games at featherweight and at the 2012 Games at lightweight.

Arum also believes Shiming will take his reputation as the greatest amateur boxer ever to come out of China and strengthen that legacy in the pros. Shiming won gold medals in the ’08 and ’12 Olympic Games at light flyweight.

Arum, like all promoters, is prone to hyperbole and really went to town about Lomachenko during a telephone conversation. In his mind, the sky is the limit for him.

“I think he is right now — with a little more experience — (he) will be the best fighter in the world, just the way as an amateur he was the best amateur in the world for many years,” Arum said. “He is phenomenal. I mean, there is nobody like him.

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“People who have seen him train, people who have seen his work ethic, they’ve never seen anything like him.”

Arum tried to stop himself but couldn’t.

“He has all the skills — and I hope I’m not getting carried away — but I really believe that he’ll be the best fighter in the world,” he said.

Lomachenko opened his pro career last October with a fourth-round knockout of Mexican Jose Ramirez, who came in with a 25-3 record. That says a lot right there, that Lomachenko took on a solid pro with 28 fights in his debut.

In case anyone is wondering, a fighter must be ranked in the top 15 to challenge for a world title. Three of the four major governing bodies do not have Lomachenko ranked that high, but the WBO has him No. 5. Of course, that’s the belt Salido holds.

Big surprise there, eh?

Anyway, it might be a little tougher to get Shiming to championship level. Not only is he just more than a month from his 33rd birthday with only three prize fights under his belt, he hasn’t come through with a knockout in his first three, although he is 3-0.

Arum said he’s not worried about that, especially since Shiming is trained by Freddie Roach, who trains his fighters to seek and destroy.

“He had a completely amateur style, but he’s a very, very smart young man and he’s worked very, very closely with Freddie, who he idolizes,” Arum said of Shiming. “He is becoming a tremendous pro. Every fight there is a big, big, big improvement. And in the gym, the guys who have seen him say he’s a completely different fighter from when Freddie got him.

“I really believe that we’re on the way with him so he can fight for a world title by the end of this year.”

The stoppages will materialize, Arum said, as he continued to try and assure us of that.

“Freddie has been changing his style to be more pro-like than amateur and the knockouts will come,” he said.

Arum sounded like it isn’t as important for Shiming to become a knockout artist than it might be for others. Arum plans to market Shiming quite a bit in his native China, which for years didn’t allow boxing.

“He had a great, storied amateur career and he’s performed a great service for boxing by getting the Chinese people interested in boxing after so many years,” Arum said. “... As far as we’re concerned, the buzz continues for him. It’s building in China and that’s what we want.

Arum: Pacquiao still has it

Timothy Bradley recently told this newspaper he doesn’t think Manny Pacquiao is the same seek-and-destroy fighter he once was. He pointed to Pacquiao’s recent fight against Brandon Rios in China, where Pacquiao won handily but seemed to be satisfied with a decision rather than pressing hard for a knockout.

This came after it was announced Bradley and Pacquiao will fight in a rematch April 12 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas (on HBO pay-per-view). It was there, in June 2012, that Bradley defeated Pacquiao in a controversial split decision.

Arum, who promotes Bradley and Pacquiao, isn’t buying what Bradley — and many others in the game — think about Pacquiao in this regard.

“Manny Pacquiao, I think, showed in the Rios fight that he knew how to go back to his roots,” Arum said. “People looked at Pacquiao as being a knockout puncher because they remember the fight with Ricky Hatton, where he laid Hatton out (in the second round in May, 2009). But the truth is that Manny Pacquiao’s strength was never as a knockout puncher.

“He was the kind of guy, and is the kind of guy, that is very elusive and comes from all angles, that has the southpaw style that scores punches. And he’s so quick and when you counter him, he disappears.”

Arum used Pacquiao’s beatdown of Oscar De La Hoya in December, 2008 as an example.

“I mean, look at the Oscar fight,” Arum said. “He never had Oscar in serious trouble of getting knocked out, but he just beat the crap out of him (stopping him after eight rounds).

“And the same thing with Rios. He fought the same kind of fight with Rios as he did with De La Hoya. So people who say, ‘Hey, he’s a great knockout puncher because he did knock out (Hatton),’ just are missing the boat. We don’t have a guy who is a one-punch knockout guy, that Hatton fight notwithstanding.”

Pacquiao has become less of a knockout puncher as he has come up through the eight weight classes in which he has toiled. Even so, he has not had a knockout in his past seven fights.

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